Families, assisted living homes and hospitals continually strive to provide the best care they can for their loved ones, residents and patients. Yet, providing basic care such as feeding, bathing and clothing a person can be time consuming, unpleasant and unrewarding. Perhaps the least favored of these tasks is changing a diaper or garment of a person that has been rendered incontinent. Still, these tasks must be done well and in a timely manner for the person to receive proper care. Products and systems that help deliver a consistently high level of basic care can be valuable aids to the people rendering these services. Safe, economical and easy to use products and systems that help achieve these results are typically well received by families, assisted living homes and hospitals alike.
Recent nursing home industry reports indicate that about half of all nursing home residents suffer from incontinence. The healthcare workers must physically check the diapers of the residents for wetness or odor to determine if they have had an incontinent episode. Although residents are supposed to be checked every two hours, the increasing ratio of individual residents to workers makes this task increasingly difficult. Many residents end up sitting in wet or soiled diapers or garments for prolonged periods. Even when the healthcare worker performs a check every two hours, the possibility exists that the resident may remain in undesirable condition for this length of time. This is not only uncomfortable, but can cause skin irritation and breakdown, and lead to infection and more serious health problems.
Maintaining a person in a dry, comfortable condition can be difficult to achieve on a consistent basis. The person may wet or soil themselves at various times throughout the day or night. The more frequently the person is checked, the better the care they will receive. Yet, checking for wetness or excrement is an awkward and unpleasant task for everyone involved, and in a nursing home or hospital setting can be a relatively time consuming task. Less dedicated workers may avoid or skip this task. In addition, different healthcare workers may allow different degrees of wetness before they believe a change is required. These types of problems need to be quickly identified and addressed by the supervisors and managers of the institution.
A wide variety of wetness sensors and wetness monitoring systems have been developed to assist healthcare workers in detecting when a resident or patient is wet. Wetness sensors typically operate on chemical or electrical principals. Chemical sensors detect changes in chemical properties such as the pH or thermochromatic level of a bandage, diaper or garment. An example of such a chemical sensor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,583,546 to Garde and 5,197,958 and 5,389,093 to Howell. The sensor turns color when contacted by urine or excrement. When a healthcare worker sees the change in color, they know the person needs attention. A problem with chemical sensors is that they are difficult to incorporate into a system that produces an audible alarm or sends a signal to a central computer where the staff and floor supervisor are located. The administrators or other staff must duplicate the work efforts of others to watch for skin rashes and sores or identify a particular worker that is skipping some checks or simply avoiding the task altogether.
Electrical sensors and monitors have been developed to detect changes in the conductive, resistive, impedance or electromagnetic characteristics of a diaper or garment due to the presence of urine. The monitors include an electric circuit that incorporates a sensor. The monitor uses the changing electrical characteristics of the sensor responsive to a dielectric fluid such as urine to determine that the diaper or garment is wet. The monitor determines that the garment is wet when the electrical circuit exceeds a threshold level inherent to its circuit. The monitor then produces a visual or audible alarm, or sends a signal to the central computer to inform the staff that the particular person wearing the monitor is wet and in need of attention. Examples of such sensors and monitors are discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,460,123 to Bass; 4,106,001 to Mahoney; 4,356,818 to Macias; 4,796,014 to Chia; 4,977,906 to DiScipio; 5,036,859 to Brown; 5,264,830 and 5,392,032 to Kline; 5,557,263 and 5,790,036 to Fisher; 5,568,128 to Nair; 5,838,240, 5,469,145 and 5,266,928 to Johnson; 5,760,694 to Nissim and 5,903,222 to Kawarizadeh, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein.
A significant problem with conventional wetness sensors and monitoring systems is that they do not gather actual wetness data. The monitors simply determine when the sensor and circuit have exceeded a predetermined threshold limit. The monitor then sounds an alarm or sends a signal to a central computer informing the healthcare staff that the particular individual needs to be changed. Actual wetness measurement data containing large quantities of information pertaining to the person condition that could prove useful to the administration and staff to provide better care to the individuals is simply not collected or lost.
Another problem with conventional wetness monitoring systems is that their sensitivity cannot be adjusted by the administration or staff to meet the needs of a particular person. The system simply detects when the electric circuit in the monitor reaches a threshold level of wetness. If a particular person has an incontinence problem involving small releases of urine or is prone to sweat during the course of their activity throughout the day, that person's monitor may continually go off even though the person does not need immediate attention. This type of nuisance alarm may cause a healthcare worker to disregard the alarm when the person actually needs attention.
A further problem with conventional wetness sensors and monitoring systems is that they require a significant amount of power to operate properly. To minimize power consumption, the monitor is designed to send signals as infrequently as possible. In many designs, the monitor will only send a signal to a central computer when a wetness event is detected. These types of systems have a significant drawback. The staff and supervisor do not know if a particular person is dry or if their monitor is simply malfunctioning.
A still further problem with conventional wetness sensors and monitoring systems is that the monitor provides no indication that the sensor is properly connected. Improperly trained or forgetful healthcare workers may incorrectly connect the sensor to the monitor. A worker may also be distracted or in a rush to perform other pending tasks and fail to connect the sensor and monitor correctly. Lack of training, distractions and the rush of performing a multitude of tasks can also prevent a worker from noticing that the monitor or sensor is damaged and not working properly. The resident or patient may end up wearing a soiled diaper or garment for many hours before the staff becomes aware of and corrects the problem.
A still further problem with conventional wetness sensors and monitoring systems is their excessive operating costs. Most conventional designs require the sensor to be disposed of after each use. Conductive and resistive type sensors that come in contact with the urine are typically disposed of after each use. These disposable sensors significantly increase the operating cost of the system because the sensors usually need to be replaced several times a day. A single person may require over a few thousand sensors annually. Even a relatively inexpensive sensor can result in high operating costs.
A still further problem with conventional wetness monitoring systems is that they are not designed to ensure that the individuals consistently receive proper care. The systems simply track the exact time between wetness events and garment changes. These systems inappropriately focus on the exact duration the individual is wet. Yet, many administrators of assisted living homes and nursing homes understand that the problem is not determining whether any given wetness event is responded to in ten or fifteen minutes, but ensuring that each individual is consistently attended to in a prompt manner and not forgotten for one or two hours or an entire day.
A still further problem with conventional wetness sensors and monitoring systems is that they are difficult to put on and uncomfortable to wear. The devices are often bulky, located in inconvenient locations on the individual that make sitting, sleeping or daily activity troublesome. Many devices include mechanisms that are elaborate and difficult to use to secure the sensor and monitor or attaching them to the garment of the individual.
The present invention is intended to solve these and other problems.